How many lands should a Commander deck run?

Short answer: 37 lands for most two-color decks, plus enough sources of each color to hit your hardest spell on curve. Longer answer — and the exact numbers for your deck — below.

Why Commander mana bases are their own problem

Everything about Commander pushes the mana base in a different direction than 60-card formats. The deck is 99 cards instead of 60, so the same land ratio actually pulls fewer colored sources per drawn card. It is singleton, which rules out the four-of consistency trick that 60-card decks lean on. There is no sideboard and no post-board configuration, so you cannot solve a bad mulligan with a Game 2 adjustment. And color identity determines what your commander can drag along, which quietly caps the fixing you have access to.

The result is that Commander lists tend to sit at higher land counts than newer players expect, and those lands need to be doing more work per slot — producing more colors, coming in untapped more often, and pulling double duty as fixing.

How many lands: the 36 to 38 window and what moves it

For a standard four-player Commander game, most decks want to be in the 36 to 38 land range. That is the honest window; you can find good lists both above and below it, but they usually have a reason. Here is what pushes you inside that window:

• Ramp count. Every mana rock or ramp spell you run is effectively worth about half a land for the purpose of hitting your third and fourth land drops. Ten-plus ramp pieces gets you down to 36; four ramp pieces pushes you up to 38. The full math on trading rocks for lands — and where it stops working — is in the ramp and land count guide.
• Average mana value. A deck averaging 3.5 mana value wants more lands than a deck averaging 2.5. If your commander wants seven-mana finishers, you need to reach seven mana on time.
• Number of colors. Two colors is easier than three, and three is easier than five. You do not necessarily need more lands for more colors — you need more fixing lands, which means fewer basics and more duals, triomes, and rainbow lands.
• Cheap card draw. Every cheap draw spell effectively shrinks your deck for the turns that matter. Rhystic Study or Sylvan Library moves you toward the low end of the land range.

If you have no idea where to land, start at 37 with about 10 ramp pieces and adjust from playtest data. That is a boring answer, but it is the correct boring answer.

How many sources of each color you need

This is where the calculator earns its keep. Once you know your land count, the follow-up question is: of those 37 lands, how many produce each color? For a mono-colored spell, more sources is always better, but there is a threshold beyond which the added slot is not paying for itself.

Starting targets for a 99-card deck at a 90% reliability threshold on the play. Single pips are tiered by the turn the spell is actually due — the later you need it, the more cards you have seen, and the cheaper it gets:

• A single-pip spell () wants 22 sources on turn 3, 20 on turn 4, 18 on turn 5.
• A double-pip spell () wants 36 sources on turn 3, 33 on turn 4, 30 on turn 5.
• A triple-pip spell () wants 44 sources on turn 4, 40 on turn 5.

The double-pip row is the one that changes deckbuilding decisions, so do not skim past it. 33 sources for a turn-4 double pip is a third of your library, and a 37-land deck with ten rocks has fewer than 50 mana sources in total — colorless rocks producing none of that color. A double-pip card is therefore only comfortable in your dominant color. In a genuinely even two-color deck, neither color reaches 33, which is why so many double-pip cards quietly underperform in decks that look well-fixed on paper. Triple pips are stricter still: 44 sources means mono-color or nothing.

If a card you want cannot reach its number, you have four honest moves: cast it a turn later, add fixing that produces the color, drop to an 85% bar (which asks for 29 sources on a turn-4 double pip instead of 33), or cut the card. Shaving "just two more sources" off the target is not on the list. Punch your specific spell into the calculator above for the exact count at your turn and threshold, and see the reference chart for how these compare to 60- and 40-card decks.

Multicolor commanders demand more fixing, not more lands

The common mistake with a three- or four-color commander is to keep the land count at 37 and stuff in more basics. The land count is fine. The land composition is what needs to change. Every basic in a three-color deck is a slot that produces one color; every triome produces three. Shocklands, fetches, on-color check lands, and pain lands do work that basics cannot in a multicolor list.

A useful test: pull your slowest, tightest spell (typically a double-pip cast on turn 4 or 5) and check the calculator. The calculator will tell you that on turn 4 wants 33 blue sources — so you need 33 cards that actually produce blue, counting triomes, shocks, fetches, and rocks that make blue. Most two-color decks discover they are at 22 or 24. That gap is the whole point of the exercise: it is not closed by adding a basic, it is closed by adding fixing, moving the spell later, or cutting it.

Worked example: a Simic () commander

You are building a two-color Simic list at 37 lands. (Two-color decks have their own dedicated guide — see the two-color Commander mana base for color splits and dual-land counts in depth.) Your commander is and you want to cast it on turn 3. That is a double-pip cost across two colors, but each individual color is only a single pip — you need at least one blue source and at least one green source by turn 3. Checked per color, the way the calculator does it, 22 sources of each puts both colors at 90.7%; at 20 each you are at 88.1%, just under the bar. Two things to keep straight: those are per-color figures, and needing both colors in the same opening is strictly harder than needing either one alone, so treat 22-and-22 as the floor rather than a cushion.

The harder spell in the deck is a turn-4 creature. Set the calculator to deck size 99, pips 2, turn 4, and iterate on sources until you hit your threshold. Then make sure your green source count in the actual deck matches or exceeds that number.

And once the deck is sleeved, the math meets the table: log your pod's games with the free Commander game tracker and you will see whether the mana base holds up in the win rate, not just in theory.

FAQ

How many lands should I run in a 2-color EDH deck?

For a two-color Commander deck with a normal curve and modest ramp, 37 lands is a solid default. Push to 38 if your ramp is light or your curve is high; drop to 36 if you are running ten or more mana rocks and cheap draw.

Do mana rocks count as sources of a color?

Sol Ring and Arcane Signet count for the colors they produce, and generic two-mana rocks that fix count too. A rock only counts for the colors it can actually generate. Signets, talismans, and on-color triomes stack up faster than you would guess.

How many of each color for a WUBRG deck?

Lower than the single-color targets, and deliberately so. At a 90% bar on the play in 99 cards a single pip wants 22 sources on turn 3 and 20 on turn 4 — and you cannot give five colors that treatment with basics, because a basic serves exactly one color. What makes five-color work is that multicolor lands count once for every color they produce: Command Tower, the triomes, fetches, and any-color rocks all add to several color counts simultaneously, so the counts overlap instead of competing. Double pips are the real casualty — 33 sources for a turn-4 double pip is not reachable in more than one color, so in a five-color deck double-pip cards belong to your dominant color only. Test the toughest spell of each color in the calculator, and expect to accept a lower threshold on your late-game splash colors.

Should I run more lands if my commander costs six or more?

Yes, or run more ramp. A six-drop commander that you want on turn 5 (with a ramp piece) needs you to actually be at 5 lands by turn 5 more than 80% of the time. That usually means 38 lands and 10-plus ramp pieces, not 37 lands and 6 ramp pieces.